


What Did You Bury?

by The_IPRE



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-11 03:39:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18422055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_IPRE/pseuds/The_IPRE
Summary: Taako has to face the consequences of Glamour Springs.





	What Did You Bury?

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by daughterofsarenrae on tumblr, and then it got a bit longer than planned
> 
> Title from Hozier's "Like Real People Do"

"You don't seem like yourself,” Kravitz said, and a laugh tore its way from Taako’s throat.

“Can’t imagine what would make you say that.” They were walking through a town together, arms linked, and _sure_ Taako’s nails might be digging a bit too much into Kravitz’s arm, and his hat might have been pulled a _bit_ lower than normal, but who could blame him. The last time that he had been through Glamour Springs, he hadn’t exactly been a hit.

Well- he had been, was the thing. He’d been a hit, and then he really, _really_ hadn't been one anymore.

Even though he kept his gaze directly ahead, vision cut off by the purple tulle brim of his wizard’s hat, Taako could feel Kravitz’s gaze shift towards him. He could picture the look of concern, the not-quite-joking face that said _I see you_ , and as Kravitz opened his mouth Taako pulled his arm away to point to a halfling child skipping around a corner up ahead. “Oh, would you look at that, is that a lich? We should regroup somewhere else so that you can tell your bird mama about it.”

“I really don’t think that she’s a lich, Taako,” Kravitz said, looking like he wanted to link arms again but not quite trusting himself to.

Taako hummed, lifting the brim of his hat so that his dramatic eyebrow raise could reach its full effect. “That’s what you say, bones, but you didn’t think my umbrella could hold a lich, which, it did.” He let out a gasp, the noise slightly strained with how tightly he was keeping himself together. “Does that make me the new death detective?”

“You’d have to take that up with the Raven Queen, darling, but I don’t think that-” Before he could continue talking, probably intending to say something that would cut right to the heart of Taako’s bullshittery, another voice rang out.

“Taako?” The elf in question put on a smile, a touch more dazzling than usual, and turned, but his expression froze in place as the man kept going. “From _Sizzle it Up_?”

Twitching his fingers behind his back, Taako made an illusory version of himself walk out of an alley near the man and his friends, because _of course_ , he had brought multiple people to come harass the most talented elf this side of the planar system.

“No, _I’m_ not Taako, but-” He gasped, a proper stage gasp that he would have been proud of some other time. “Is _that_ Taako?”

He pointed to the fake-Taako that was, admittedly, not the best replica – especially as it was only four feet tall, with a disappointingly short hat – but it waved, putting a dramatic hand to its mouth.

The head of the group, a human man in his late fifties, spared the not-Taako a glance before looking back to where the real one stood next to Kravitz, who was looking confused, increasingly worried, and thoroughly unprepared for the situation. “I don’t think so.” He started to approach, and Taako linked arms with Kravitz again, who, _gods bless him_ , put a reassuring hand on Taako’s grip. “Do you know who I am?”

“Can’t say I do, homie-”

“Right, ‘cause I wasn’t at your show. My wife was, though, with our kid. I wonder if you’d recognize them?”

As the man talked, Taako’s breath was a tightening coil in his chest, and he tightened his grip on Kravitz as he muttered under his breath. “Can you get us back home?”

“What?”

“ _Can you get us out of here?”_ Taako’s voice was a strangled hiss as he looked back over at the man, who was still talking, still approaching, and he felt like he was peeling out of his skin, layer by layer. “Please?”

A scythe rippled through the air, no more questions asked, the man was hidden behind a quicksilver-swirling void, and Kravitz pulled Taako through behind him.

 

* * *

 

Back home in their comforting apartment, cloudy sunlight creeping through one of the full length windows and outlining the furniture in gold, Taako was doing his best not to make eye contact with Kravitz. Bad enough that he’d started to fall apart back there, bad enough that he could still picture any number of mother-and-child from his last show that the man might have been referring to, but one difficult straw on the whole shitty stack was that-

Well, for all that he’d told Kravitz about his past and his mistakes, he hadn’t quite brought this one up. It had always seemed so _big_ , forty deaths, and then suddenly it wasn’t his fault! But...he had still been the one to serve those people their last meal. He’d been the one to see shit turn south and tuck tail and run. He’d been the one who should have done something, but.

He hadn’t.

Taako had helped save the entire universe, but he hadn’t been able to save forty _fucking_ people.

“Well, I’m going to start dinner-”

“Are you okay?”

“How does salad sound-” Taako's tripping words overlapped with Kravitz's as they started talking at the same time. “Ah, sorry, cut you off there. What were you saying?”

Kravitz leaned back against the kitchen counter, and even as Taako turned away from him to open a cabinet he could feel his boyfriend’s stare. “Well, uh, that was something of a- a quick evac, if you will.” His voice was slipping back into a British accent, seeming just as uncomfortable with the topic as Taako was, but he wasn’t going to let it go quite so easily. “Anything that I should know about?”

Taako laughed, high-pitched enough that it squeaked, and he set two plates down so hard that he was a bit amazed they didn’t chip on the cool counter. It would have been easy enough to fix, he had magic powers after all, but he didn’t need that extra hint of crappiness. “Yeah, darling, I’m just peachy. I didn’t kill those people, after all, I wasn’t the one who poisoned ‘em. I was just the one who took the fall and had a hand in their deaths and fed them chicken that should have been the best chicken of their life but instead it was their last. ‘M all good, though,” he said, shoulders tensing and voice straining as he moved around the kitchen faster, keeping himself grounded because this was _his home, gods damn it,_ and he wasn’t going to fall apart in his own fucking apartment just because he might have to face some consequences for his actions.

As he caught sight of his reflection in the glass of the window, he saw the man’s face again, bitter and angry and still _hurting_ , and he had to turn away.

There was a pause, and Taako could almost hear the clack of the beads in Kravitz’s dreads as he fiddled with them in thought. “Well, I hope this doesn’t mean that I have to arrest my boyfriend for death crimes.”

Taako let out a laugh, a little less hysterical than the last, because wouldn’t that be just the fucking thing – Lup’s the actual lich, but he’d be the one who got got. “I sure hope not too, Krav.” In a distant part of his mind, he realized that his shoulders were shaking, grown painful and tense without his attention.

He turned, and there was a quiet Kravitz next to him, smile quirked to one side as he held out a hand towards Taako’s shoulder. “May I?” Taako nodded, feeling the palms descend onto him and fingers pressing into the muscle, and he forced himself to relax. It hurt, but in a good way. It wasn’t the sharpness of dropped plates, of harsh breaths, of regret and guilt and running and displaced blame.

It was just a dull, constant pressure, and it was the kind of thing that would eventually ease the pain.

Eventually, Taako’s fingers stopped fluttering so frantically, and he let himself relax back into Kravitz, just a bit. Things were quiet and still, two plates left out on the counter and a bag of lettuce sitting on the cutting board, fingers simply resting on muscles instead of pressing down, and when Taako cleared his throat he felt Kravitz’s grip tighten, just a touch. An acknowledgment that he was there. It was sweet, and didn’t make him feel quite so boxed in, and when Taako turned around he put his hands on Kravitz’s waist and made eye contact because that was the _least_ his boyfriend deserved.

“So, after the...back when I first got here, I was a traveling chef, and, I’m not afraid to say it, I was kind of hot shit.” He let out a laugh, a bit more real than those before, smile quirking up on one side as he remembered the early days. They had been _good_ , was the thing, riding around and showing off, and it was almost like he had Lup but not quite but it was _fine_ because he hadn’t needed anybody but himself. As he kept talking, his expression started to freeze so it wouldn’t fall. “After a while, I picked up an assistant, because the world couldn’t handle pure, uncut Taako. Had to be diluted a bit, you know. For the safety of the masses. Of course.”

Swallowing, Taako brushed his thumbs against Kravitz’s sides, maintaining eye contact because if he didn’t have that, he might have just shut up then and there, and he couldn’t do that. He actually cared about Kravitz, about the gentle pressure on his shoulders and the look that said _I want you to feel safe_ and the laugh that curled on the edge of his throat just in case, and he couldn’t brush past this shit forever.

Standing quiet in their shared kitchen, outlined in gold and rose and amber as the sun began to set, words falling into the space between two bodies, Taako told Kravitz the truth of his last show at Glamour Springs.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to leave a comment or kudos, or come talk to me on [tumblr](https://the-ipre.tumblr.com)!


End file.
